He Left My Rejection on His Desk, So I Signed It Myself novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: What He Owes

The old healer of the circle stitched Corwin's eyebrow and bound his ribs a second time.

She told us to keep him on his back until noon.

Then she took her basket and left, and did not look at either of us.

Corwin lay on the cot in his tent, with the flap tied shut.

I sat on the edge and held a wet cloth to the corner of his mouth.

Neither of us said a word for a long time.

"You haven't asked me for anything," he said at last.

"What would I ask for?"

"Anything. The seat. The Ridge. My hands." His voice cracked. "Three years ago you were alone in that room for fourteen hours, and I was sitting at a table being read a lie."

"You didn't know."

"I should have known. I should have gone back the first time the pains were false. You never had a false pain in your life."

I put the cloth down.

"I don't want you to say you're sorry," I said. "Not now."

"Then what?"

"I want you to say what happened. Plain. Not what he did. What you did."

He took a breath, and it hurt him.

"I sat at the Moot table and let a man read me my wife's labor off a scrap of paper," he said. "I didn't ask to see the paper. I stayed because it was easier than going home and facing what I'd have to feel if it was real."

I waited.

"I wasn't there," he said. "I was a coward, Tilda, and you paid for it."

He did not cry out loud.

Water ran out of his eyes, down toward his ears, and he let it, and he did not look away from me.

I had waited three years to hear him say that.

I had thought it would feel like winning.

It felt like being able to breathe all the way in.

I lay down along his good side and put my face in his neck.

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